1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method for outputting a glossy print product.
2. Description of the Related Art
Recently, there is provided a printing apparatus, such as discussed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2007-183593, which uses a transparent and glossy medium as a toner. In this regard, for example, the gloss of an image can be improved and an image can be coated (protected) by applying a transparent toner on the entire surface of a print product.
Furthermore, an image can be output that faithfully reflects a user's desire by applying a transparent toner in a specific character and graphic shape. In addition, the gloss of the color toners can be increased by executing thermal fixing processing at a speed lower than a normal speed on color toners, such as cyan, magenta, yellow, and black (CMYK).
However, the total amount of applied toner is generally restricted to a predetermined amount in an electrophotographic type printing apparatus that uses a toner. The applied toner amount ranging from 0% to 100% can be set for each latent image of each of four colors of CMYK. Therefore, the amount of applied toner up to 400% may be applied in total of the latent images. However, if an input of 400%, for example, has been performed on a sheet in an electrophotographic type printing apparatus, the toner may not be appropriately fixed and may be scattered. Therefore, in this case, an appropriate image cannot be obtained.
In order to address the above-described problem, a method for restricting the total amount of applied toner can be used. More specifically, a printing apparatus can restrict the total amount of applied toner to the amount equal to or smaller than a predetermined amount.
However, the above-described condition for restricting the amount of applied toner becomes more difficult to satisfy when a transparent toner is additionally applied. That is, a similar limit amount, which is applied to the total amount of toners for the four colors of CMYK, must be applied to that for five color toners, which include the toners of four colors of CMYK and the transparent toner.
Thus, in this case, an amount of toner that is applied for each color is reduced. Therefore, it may become difficult to apply the desired gloss to an image to be printed.
Furthermore, in the case of increasing the gloss of the color toner by performing thermal fixing processing at a speed slower than a normal speed, the gloss of only an object part, which is included in an image, increases. In this case, it is difficult to increase the gloss of blank areas of the image in which no object is included. Accordingly, with the above-described conventional method, it is difficult to increase the gloss of an image to be printed in the case of printing image data that has many blank areas or many low-density (highlight) areas of CMYK toners.